From what I’ve read, not enough ink is being spilled inquiring into what may not unfairly be described as the suicide mission of the Trump campaign.
Arguably he never runs a very disciplined campaigned. Ironically before Harris internally overthrew Biden as the Democratic nominee, people were admiring the remarkable “restraint” Trump showed in his first debate.
To be sure, Trump was not much more restrained than he usually is. Whatever discipline he showed owed as much to how CNN turned the mics off for opponents who weren’t speaking as the state of Biden’s deterioration was exposed, his decline the extent of which assuredly caught Trump off guard, too. However in between Biden staring around with his mouth hanging ajar, Trump notably said that Democrats were committing infanticide, and migrants were gorging themselves on social security and Medicare.
Now, perhaps to say the least, Harris’s ascent to Obama-reminiscent cult status in the Democratic party, and in the media, has caught Trump flat-footed. But the observance of the fact understates the suicidal recklessness of the Trump campaign. I mean even for Trump, he’s campaigning stupidly.
Like I said in one of my recent posts, it got off to an egregious start with the ridiculously cocksure choice of JD Vance when Trump assumed Biden was the Dem nominee, whom he could expect to trounce. Afterward when Vance’s misogyny was laid bare with the cat lady comments that not even I was aware of, I who needed no convincing that Vance isn’t a shill for the very online incel, Elon Musk/Joe Rogan-loving, red-pilled, “manosphere” cretinous young men of today’s far right (who hate women and scorn them for supposedly putting their professional lives before marrying, or at least dating, or just having sex with them)— Trump made the strategic catastrophic blunder of questioning whether Kamala was really black at a majority black conference for black journalists.
Later he and his sidekick had the grotesquely poor taste to try and film a campaign ad at Arlington National Cemetery. When the cemetery explained to them that sorry, guys, they couldn’t help themselves to the graves of America’s fallen soldiers to exploit for campaign material, Trump and Vance were enraged.
Now after perhaps the most consequential debate in the election cycle, Trump goes off about the 2020 election result, repeats the Democrats-infanticide claim, and for seasoning, he bewails the migrants eating people’s pets.
I think the assiduous pundit could be forgiven for theorizing that Trump does not care if he wins the election or loses. Trump’s victim mentality is a hardwired feature, not a bug, of the man’s psychology. Despite in some ways his actually being persecuted, by the media and by federal and state governments, and intelligence agencies famously, he does have a persecution complex.
I’m not a psychologist, but at this point, I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine that Trump does not intend to run a disciplined campaign, because he would rather lose covered in glory after two assassination attempts than responsibly compete against a progressive biracial female progressive Democrat. If Trump were to compete like he wanted to win and then he lost, I wonder if it would be simply too much for his ego to handle.
Besides he’s all set assuredly to blow up on Truth Social that the Democrats stole another election. He’ll probably stoke the furnace of his election denial in attempting to summon the mob to the Capitol again. Or something. He has a chance if he loses, to legendize himself as the victim of a government conspiracy to thwart the will of the mob, or “the people.”
Anyway the point is Trump is as happy to be a fake loser as to be a real winner. There is cultural power, and there is political power. And the only damn thing Trump cares about is power either way, however he could get it, and being in the news. The spectacle of going to prison or at least going to sit in courtrooms again is at least as thrilling to his vanity as actually winning another presidential term.
I could care less.
A part of me intensely desires to see Trump lose to Kamala, as much as I seriously fear a Harris presidency. If only to make Republicans pay for their addiction to an unelectable loser, a narcissist with pathological contempt for America’s republican institutions, with authoritarian leanings whose policies were not and wouldn’t be very good and in some cases regarding fiscal, trade, and economic policy have been and would be disastrous.
When America gets a Comrade Kamala (a decent nickname because it’s apt) chief executive, the GOP will reap what they sowed. They could have thrown Trump out for a Nikki Haley, a Mike Pence, a Ron Desantis or a Tim Scott when they had the chance. The reason they didn’t is because the Republican base is practically insane. After Trump was indicted they nominated him, because they pitied him.
What self-loathing lunatic votes for someone he pities?
Being a Nikki Haley fan, my spirit aches horribly over the fact that Nikki would have crushed Kamala.
Well, let Trump lose then.
— Jay